A counter for Illum spam and a new tactic

A counter for Illum spam and a new tactic

I played a game with Xereos where he used the Guardian's repulsion quite skillfully to a great effect. Basically my illums were rendered useless. However, that tactic leaves its user without firepower and not hurting the enemy since the targets are pushed away.

Enter carriers.

Carriers are known to have problems, but here's what we came up with: a fleet of carriers and Guardians with repulsion, and we deployed this tactic in a test game. The results are quite promising - The Guardians keep anything away from the carriers, which in turn launch more and more bombers and fighters indefinitely.

Against an illum spam this will dominate - the illums have a smaller range than the repulsion and they will simply be eaten by the fighters while scoring almost no hits. With a bit of micromanagement you can take a far larger fleet with this tactic.

Repulsion also has other benefits. Xereos used it quite skillfully to push my fleet away from my planet, and then simply bombed the planet undisturbed. A similar tactic can be used when attacking heavily fortified planets - again, carriers + repulsion prove most effective.

However, this tactic has some drawbacks. The first drawback is that LRMs and Assiliants have a longer range than the repulsion. Second, if you screw up and let Subverters into your safe zone and they disable your Guardians you're screwed. It's very important to keep some illums / HC so if the safe zone collapses you have some defense. Another problem is other carriers - with the same amount of money, if one side has only Carriers and one side has Carriers + Guardians, the side with only Carriers is in an advantage. StrikeCraft are generally not so good vs. Carriers (ironically) and the Advent Carriers are the weakest.

How do you beat Illuminator spam as TEC? If he doesn't have Repulsion, simply use your economy to outproduce and outtech him. And use Kol/Marzas. As soon as he has Repulsion, invest into a Dunov (which I typically make my third capital ship, after my Akhan and Kol) and learn the EMP. Manually target his Guardians (preferably clustered) and let loose with EMP bursts. Not only does it drain shields (which is always win, as Advent go light in the armor department), but it drains antimatter as well. Without antimatter, he can't keep you at arm's length and your capships and cruisers will make short work of him.

Just doing a little brainstorming, but as TEC running with the carrier idea, if you have the economy to get a good sized force of Hoshikos with demo-bots you can micro your carriers away from most of his fleet and reduce his effectiveness in catching up with you. Combine this with some LRMs picking at his heels and a cap ship of your own (I like my second cap ship to be a dunov just to EMP Advent shields) you can really reduce how well he can effectively focus fire your forces while your strike craft whittle him down to a manageable number, and like Dafeaz said, outproduce him in the end.

Another problem is other carriers - with the same amount of money, if one side has only Carriers and one side has Carriers + Guardians, the side with only Carriers is in an advantage. StrikeCraft are generally not so good vs. Carriers (ironically) and the Advent Carriers are the weakest.

Simple counter... if you expect to be using this tactic make your cap ship be mostly Advent Carrier Cap Ships. They use a push ability that damages and slows incoming strike craft. This is about the first ability I tech up along with the faster energy weapon recycle but for the fleet your talking about take the increased drone anima and the push. A couple carriers with this will insure that few if any strike craft will get near you. Flak is also very effective but you have to keep it under control... it tends to chase fighters around and will get out of your repulse safety zone. Even if there are a whole lot of carriers about 15 or 20 units of flak will kill all strike craft so fast you will lose at best about 3 or 4 units...

This also means there is a counter for an Advent mostly carrier fleet If any other fleet just stands off at say LRM range and has about 15 or 20 units of flak it is effectively over. You always have the option of charging his fleet if this happens and you will get to repulse it around but... with a lot of LRM's they will simply close to an effective range on their own again and pound you from all sides. Repulsing the flak is fine but if he has a lot of it you will only prolong the inevitable (namely the destruction of your strike craft).

That is not to say it won't work just saying I think I have seen a thread on this once before. And I have tried out the tactic about a month back. It is not bad and there are variations that let TEC and Vesari do some similar things but you have to be ready to shift gears fast against an experienced player as they will counter quite quickly. You will only get one fleet encounter using this tactic so make it count.

The good news is if you can force a retreat on the first fleet battle and you know you will need to replace all those carriers what you do is break the carriers up into groups of 7 or 10 and send them to as many enemy worlds as you can reach. Keep them shifting from world to world. Just passing through a system carriers can do impressive damage. When he tracks them all down and kills them finally replace with something else like HC and Illuminators and force a second big battle... the enemy will probably have switched to the counter fleet build and you can maybe catch him with his pants down.

The good news is if you can force a retreat on the first fleet battle and you know you will need to replace all those carriers what you do is break the carriers up into groups of 7 or 10 and send them to as many enemy worlds as you can reach. Keep them shifting from world to world. Just passing through a system carriers can do impressive damage. When he tracks them all down and kills them finally replace with something else like HC and Illuminators and force a second big battle... the enemy will probably have switched to the counter fleet build and you can maybe catch him with his pants down.Just my 2 cents.

Any counter that requires significantly more resources than the countered tactic is not a counter. The thing that actually counters the opponent in such a case is the bigger eco.When discussing tactics we should assume two players of roughly equal skill who colonized at roughly the same speed and hold roughly equal terf.

I understand this. However, the TEC has a SIGNIFICANT economic advantage over the Advent. Even with an "equal" scenario, a good TEC player will be able to outbuild and outresearch his equally-skilled Advent opponent simply based on faction differences.

And to use the tactic I described, you don't need much of an economic advantage. By the time he's fielding Guardians you should be within a research tier of fielding your own force of Kodiaks. And I try to have 2-3 capships by that point, which means a Dunov, but I'm a capship whore. Like I said, a Dunov's EMP will make short work of the Guardian's antimatter pool. For added effectiveness, Light Frigates with their antimatter steal ability are cheap and quick.

However I will admit that I am fairly new to the game, and this is just conjecture.

Amiribiri's technique can be quite effective late-game against traditional HC/support or LRF spamming, as I found to my dismay. Even massing flak doesn't do much good, as your ships are easily scattered and picked off by micro'd repulsion.

It's debatable that it would be as strong after guardian/repulse gets hit with a nerf, but on the other hand strikecraft will probably have gotten an upgrade in the same patch.

Against an Advent player using the same technique single battles can last waay to long Antimatter-stealing disciples don't really seem to have the range to hit repulsing guardians, and it ends up being a game of alternately charging guardians and dueling strikecraft, endlessly. It's a good call that a strictly carrier-based Advent player will out-damage a carrier/guardian player, but no one will go straight carriers in 1.04 (cuz usually they suck).

Where I could see this really shining would be against Vasari and TEC. At this point Vasari's strength is in Heavy Cruiser/Subverter fleets, and TEC relies on the Kodiak/Hosinko combo. Both of these will be demolished by a fleet of bomber-carriers with skillfully micro'd guardians. TEC and Vasari flak normally rock strikecraft (especially teched Vasari): neither do any good halfway across the gravwell, which is where they will be after the guardians get done with them. Divide and conquer.

Against subverters it's all about the staggered Guardian kamikaze, charging 1 by 1 to push subverters further and further from your fleet. Even if a subv gets close enough to tackle one G, nothing else will be stunned..same with lrms..done properly (rapidly toggling the *amazingly* broken repulsion ability) they will never get close...

SO Advent has one *more* thing going for them:P Anyway, good games, Amiribiri, way to try something which the larger community hasn't seen alot of

replay of Advent Vs Advent drawgame using this technique: http://www.mediafire.com/?fxas2s01seu

PS, as Vasari against this - my Subverters' distortion field (stun) didn't seem to work too well, even when I got close enough to use it; several guardians seemed unaffected or to shrug off the stun within a second. Anyone else have this experience?

Good analysis, except for one minor omission - illums are tech level 2, and guardian repulsion is tech 4. So it takes a little more investment to activate the defense.Thoughts on an effective counter for TEC and Vasari?-- Retro

illums are tech 3repulse is tech 5

And advent is the only race that doesn't have any units that can hit guardians without severe upgrades

hrmm, megavolt, that would work if the LRM could reach the guardians...which if they are using broken repulsion the way they should be ain't gonna happen...and as long as G's are alive you aren't hitting my carriers either, which is why (see above) this strategy is effective against LRMs...

I want to note that I wasn't the one who found this tactic. Xereos used Repulsion on me very effectively, I only contributed the addition of Carriers to that.

RE Subverters, if you remember you were able to force me to retreat using them. My Guardians did not seem to remain disabled, but their Repulsion was rendered ineffective . So in practice the Subverters can nullify the Repulsion if they get close enough.

Well if we want to get technical, this strat was first publicly considered almost a month ago @ http://forums.sinsofasolarempire.com/308320, Jinx's reply # 14.

I think this is the first practical application though, unless X has some old replays they want to share

Re: Subverters - it's true, I did force your retreat, but ordinarily subverters won't let a fleet retreat at all. Could have been poor micro on my part, but I distinctly recall casting distortion on your tightly packed forces and having the G's shrug it off. I'll have to look at the replay, unless someone can confirm that Guardians are strong against stun effects or that there is an upper limit on ships affected by distortion field AoE.

hrmm, megavolt, that would work if the LRM could reach the guardians...which if they are using broken repulsion the way they should be ain't gonna happen...and as long as G's are alive you aren't hitting my carriers either, which is why (see above) this strategy is effective against LRMs...

If the player is smart, he wi,ll split his LRMs into 2-3 groups and have 2-3 groups of light frigates and carriers. You can spend your time sending single gaurdians to counter each group, but then those single unmassed guardians will be overwhelmed, or at least several of them will be and eventually they will get through to your carriers.

How fast that can happen will depend on the fleet sizes, but assuming theres roughly equal supply, its only a matter of times

Certainly more micro intensive, but splitting your forces would work better against lone guardian charges and starts moving toward tactical play, something you still don't see alot of in Sins: "Let's both line up like Redcoats and shoot at each other until numbers prevail!"

A smart Advent player is always going to have a few guardians with the main carrier group however, against the possibility of opposing forces slipping around his initial repulse-charges, so we need something extra. Thoughts?

I've had some luck against repulsion/carriers by retreating from the gravwell and setting up in ambush at the near edge of the next one. Vasari Subverters can usually cast stun before repulsion hits (especially if you start cast on the first target to hit the well) and as Advent your own repulsion can push incoming enemies right out of the well, which limits their movement severely.

Even if your forces get repulsed, in this position, they are being pushed back, not scattered like leaves. Additionally, massing your flak/fighters right where opposing carriers are going to leave phase space mitigates any micro their squads might attempt to avoid interception. This is not an ideal solution, especially if your are fleeing one of your own worlds, but if you are on the defensive it's better than a sharp stick in the eye

What's interesting in all of this is that repulsion, however broken, actually makes carrier fleets viable late-game. Again, not an ideal solution, but until 1.1 comes along and hopefully fixes repulsion and exalts strikecraft it's all that fighter/bomber junkies have.

Ambush is probably the best tactic. Subverters as the enemy drops out of phase space if you're Vasari, Dunov battlecruisers with EMP charge if you're TEC with a squadron of Cobalts to back them up. If you're good at micro managing LRMs, they can actually outrange repulsion, but you'll need plenty of flak and fighters to protect them from the enemy carriers. Problem with the LRM strat is that your opponent can use the 'Guardian bowling ball' strat on your LRMs. Basically, he splits off one Guardian from his fleet and runs it headlong in the enemy fleet and hits repulsion as he goes. It scatters the opposing fleet like bowling pins, and this will play hell with LRM squadrons.

Having played Advent using the Guardian / carrier ball strategy, I know that Subverters can rape you fast and hard if even one or two get past your Repulsion. I don't play the Guardian / carrier ball strat often, so I'm not very good at micro-ing it. I usually end up letting a Subverter in and then its over. I end up spending to much micro time on my cap ship abilities (which is hard not to do when you're Advent) and neglect my Guardians.

Personally, I think that Repulsion should at least not affect capital ships. That way, at least an opponent has the option of using capital ship abilities to try to neutralize Guardians. EMP Charge comes to mind, which I've used to great effect against Subverters and Overseers in the past.